AUSWEB BLOG

Google is rolling out a new service called “Google Buzz”, aimed at the social networking and micro-blogging crowd ala Facebook & Twitter. Apparently, it’s another social networking tool offering a new way to share updates, photos, videos and start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s not available to all Gmail users yet, but if you have an iPhone or Android phone you can try it out “WebApp” style by visiting buzz.google.com. View the details on the Official Google Blog, or the Google Code Blog:

Today, we’re launching Google Buzz, a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz is built right into Gmail, so there’s nothing to set up — you’re automatically following the people you email and chat with the most.

Google Buzz, Gmail, Google, Twitter

A new post has appeared on the official Google Blog, detailing security attacks on their infrastructure originating from China:

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

The post goes on to mention that Google is now reviewing their business operations in China, which already operate in a censored capacity in conjunction with Chinese laws, and this may result in the shutdown of Google.cn and a complete withdrawal of Google’s Chinese offices. You can read the full post below:

Official Google Blog: “A New Approach to China”

Google, News Blog, China, Google, Security

Continuing their hot-streak of announcements and free service releases & updates of late, Google has now introduced “Google Public DNS”, a new experimental public DNS resolver promising a host of improvements to browsing speed and performance and both validity and security.

The DNS protocol is an important part of the web’s infrastructure, serving as the Internet’s “phone book”. Every time you visit a website, your computer performs a DNS lookup. Complex pages often require multiple DNS lookups before they complete loading. As a result, the average Internet user performs hundreds of DNS lookups each day, that collectively can slow down his or her browsing experience.

Complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users’ web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable

We believe that a faster DNS infrastructure could significantly improve the browsing experience for all web users. To enhance DNS speed but to also improve security and validity of results, Google Public DNS is trying a few different approaches that we are sharing with the broader web community through this service.

You can view the full details and documentation on the Google Code blog here: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/

To give Google’s Public DNS services a try, you can view instructions to get started here: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

Google Code, DNS, DNS Service, DNS Zones, Google, Open DNS, Resolver

When you signup for an AUSWEB hosting plan, the first thing most customers do is upload their website – replacing the default New AUSWEB Customer index.html file for new accounts.

A common question we receive, is ‘how can I create a simple landing page for my website?’. Usually from customers who are using their domain for Email and/or file hosting and not yet ready to invest either too much time or money into a fully-fledged website – and just want a simple landing page with an image or contact details and info.

Obviously there are numerous options for HTML coding, anything from Notepad to DreamWeaver is capable of coding something suitable for all situations depending on your experience. However, if you’re looking for something quick and easy that doesn’t require much knowledge of HTML, a web based What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG for short) editor is probably just the thing you need!

Fortunately, Google Sites has one of the easiest and most user friendly WYSIWYG editors available, allowing you to specify various HTML options and choose from a range of pre-defined themes and templates, before letting you adjust everything in an easy and intuitive browser based editor even novices can use. You can change text, colours, images, add and remove links, as well as simple and advanced table and layout format settings. Everything you need to design the simplest blank landing page with a contact address, to a full webpage setup is available to you.

Head over to Google Sites to check it out, all thats required is a Google account!

Google, HTML, Web Design design, DreamWeaver, Google, Google Sites, HTML, Web Design, Website, WYSIWYG

Google has just released their 2009 Search Trend results, cataloguing the people, events and memories that made up this year. The clear winner as you might be able to guess was the king of pop Michael Jackson, who’s search results spiked massively after the singer’s death and continue to rank highly.

For the full story visit the Google Blog, and for the full Zeitgeist rankings over several categories check out the following link: Google Zeitgeist 2009

Google, Off Topic Google, Michael Jackson, Rankings, Search, Trends, Zeitgeist

As part of Google’s ever-growing range of tools for improving your website and businesses, Australian users can now visit the Google Local Business Centre to create a listing to help customers find your business on Google and Google Maps.

Use the power of Google’s data to learn where your customers come from and what they search for to find you. You can add photos, opening times, contact info and other details along with your location on Google Maps, to help people search for your products faster and easier than ever before.

You can view more info on the Local Business Centre in a neat little video presentation via Google Australia’s Youtube Channel here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8iGJjYIzVc

Google Google, Google Maps, LBC, Listings, Local Business Centre, Maps, Search, Small Business

Google has thrown another curveball into the mix ahead of next years planned release of Chrome OS, officially releasing details on the OS as well as Open Sourcing the project: Read more…

Chrome OS, Google Chrome, Chrome OS, Chromium, Cloud, Desktop, Google, netbook, Open Source

With all the myths out there surrounding Search Engine Optimization, Google’s Webmaster tools is definitely the first stop any serious web admin should consider for managing their websites and SEO.

Google has just released a comprehensive “Google for Webmasters” presentation which aims to give you a complete and better understanding of SEO, from what is involved, to the best practices for your site’s optimization. As usual, it’s always best to get it straight from the horse’s mouth! You can view the presentation at the link below:

Google for Webmasters

Google, Web Design, Web Development Google, SEO, webmaster

Matt Cutts Talks Communication Strategy

One thing that Google is pretty good at is providing resources for webmasters to learn from. The regular videos from Matt Cutts in which he answers user-submitted questions are no different. It just happens to be this very topic that is addressed in the latest YouTube upload.
Read more…

Feeds, Google, HTML, News, Scripting & Coding, Search, Web Hosting News

As its custom-built file system strains under the weight of an online empire it was never designed to support, Google is brewing a replacement.

Apparently, this overhaul of the Google File System is already under test as part of the “Caffeine” infrastructure the company announced earlier this week.

In an interview with the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), Google’s Sean Quinlan says that nearly a decade after its arrival, the original Google File System (GFS) has done things he never thought it would do.

Read more…

Google, Scripting & Coding, Software GFS, Google, Storage

Just as Microsoft was gaining ground with press and reception for their Bing search engine, various pro-Microsoft skewed search results are being uncovered. Not really a surprising move by Microsoft, and given their longtime feud with Apple and the recent cut-throat laptop wars, Microsoft appear to be censoring  Bing’s search results.

Searching for most phrases with anything anti-Microsoft or involving competitors such as Apple, will turn up some interesting results. Just yesterday searching for “is Microsoft Evil?” returned nothing but anti-Google links, but this has now been adjusted. Try a few search combinations like “why are Macs so awesome?” or “why are iPod’s the best?” and you will be quickly shot down with results telling you Macs are expensive, unreliable, poor for gaming, or youtube links for putting your ipod in the microwave, or why Zune’s are so much better!

Boy we’ve come along way from here! Not the most mature move for a new search engine trying to gain trust out there. Monitor Bing for yourself using this site which will let you search both Google and Bing simultaneously.

Google, News, Off Topic, Search apple, bing, Google, Microsoft, Search, SEO, Windows

A common question we receive from our customer’s is ‘How do I improve my Google search results?’.  While there’s no easy answer, there are many opinions on SEO best practices. It’s easy to become lost in the various “do’s and don’ts”, and myths of Search Engine Optimisation practices (SEO), but as usual it’s best to head straight to the source for information and one of the most useful tools for managing your website(s) is provided by Google themselves, with their free “Webmaster Tools” suite.

All that’s needed is a Google account, and to add and verify all websites you own and wish to monitor. From fine-tuning your robots.txt file, used for managing how Google’s robots crawl your website, to analysing your search term keywords and managing your sitelinks – Webmaster Tools is a handy first port of call, especially before extending to other Google services such as Analytics, and Adsense.

Google, HTML, Web Development analytics, crawl, Google, robots, SEO, Webmaster Tools

Nine months after launching the Chrome web browser, Google has now announced the Google Chrome Operating System, “an attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.” Google plans to offer Chrome OS on a wide array of devices in 2010, but the first target will be the increasingly lucrative netbook market.

Read more…

Chrome, Google, Operating Systems Chrome, Google, netbook, OS, Windows